Nintendo’s Harrison: WiiWare in 2007, Game Boy retired?
Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 2:27pm by Jack
Some interesting/sad news from Nintendo today. GameIndustry BIZ tells it like it is, or might be:
“It’s hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark,” he told GameDaily BIZ. Harrison also informed us that Nintendo’s WiiWare service could actually still launch this year. When the announcement was first made, Nintendo made it seem like we wouldn’t see anything until early 2008, but Harrison isn’t ruling out 2007 entirely. “It may not take until 2008. I’ve seen a couple of ideas that have already been generated even before we went public [with WiiWare]. Whether those are going to be ready or not, I don’t really know,” he said. “It really depends on the developers. If they have their games ready and they’re of an appropriate quality, then there’s nothing to stop them from launching before the end of the year. It’s just the fact that we only recently gave out the development tools and the development specifications, so most people haven’t even started yet.”
Hear that? Get going developers! No sleep. No eat. No significant others. Just cold, lonely development. First to market gets the kingdom and the glory, and the lamentations of their women! And they can scream “w00t frist!” like so many of the Internet’s finest citizens do every day.
On the Game Boy front I’ve always secretly hoped that the next iteration of Nintendo’s hand held strategy would borrow a page from the retro book and revive the Game Boy trademark in a completely redesigned shell. All the bells and whistles but with those tell-tale letters a lot of us saw when we opened a small rectangular present at Christmas time in 1989. Sounds like it’s not slated to happen, but I can dream.
[Thanks, John!]
July 16th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Woot! Frist!!!11
July 16th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Face it, the next iteration of the GameBoy line is already out and it is called DS Lite. Deal with it (I did!).
July 16th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
oooooww man im always sometimes first
July 16th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
i’m ok with gameboy going away.
in other news- check out xkcd today. so much truth in a comic about stick figures…
July 16th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
It is weird to see the most popular name in handheld video gaming being pushed aside like that. Most companies would die to have something as powerful and as recognizable as the GameBoy name. But I guess that’s how successful Nintendo is in the handheld sector, where they can drop it for something new, and ultimately surpass it. Damn.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
At 18 years of continuous production (so far), Game Boy is by far the longest-running game console in history.
In other words, it’s had a good run. Let it be, and bring it back someday as a retro thing. It has to go away first in order to do that.
That said, I hope the various Game Boy/GBC emulators on the DS shape up before they discontinue the GBA SP.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
It makes as much sense for Nintendo to make a new Game Boy as it does for them to make a Gamecube 2. Remember how there were 2 next-gen systems at Big N in development and Wii was the top pick? There’s a reason we didn’t get the Nintendo Xtreme Terminal… It’s so the DS and Wii could dominate the market and offer actual gaming innovation and growth for the first time in 10 years.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Are we ever going to have another channel ? before Wiiware ?
something like a DS download station channel, VC demo channel, oh when we will get the (Look at Mii channel),.. are they going to be more firmware update ? when will the Wii support the lastest flash version to stream videos other than you tube on the internet ? where is the Keyboard , will the Wii get one ? what are does usb connectors for ?
They are a few things the Wii needs to catch up on other than Wiiware , one cool thing is, if Nintendo sends an firware update to the menu settings by adding a feature that you can control the pulsing blue light, with option like on or off , make it pulsate at different speeds or make it a constant blue light stream. I’m not saying these feature are necessary , but it gives a nice touch up to the Wii…
All this is said because what about if we dont get Wiiware this year , theres alot of stuff that Nintendo can bring or do to the console in the mean time.